Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a hard game to talk about casually because everyone has a different version of Smash in their head.
Some people play it with items on, weird stages, four people yelling on a couch, and absolutely no shame. Some people turn every item off, pick Final Destination, and act like one missed air dodge is a federal crime. Some people only care about the roster. Some people only care about frame data. I am somewhere closer to the casual side, which means I mostly want the game to feel fun, chaotic, and worth playing with friends. Ultimate nails that better than almost anything on Switch.
The roster is the big headline, and it still feels ridiculous. Mario, Link, Kirby, Samus, Pikachu, Sonic, Snake, Cloud, Sephiroth, Sora, Steve, Banjo-Kazooie, Ryu, Pac-Man, Mega Man, and a pile of characters I am forgetting because the roster is basically a gaming museum with violence enabled. It is the kind of lineup that makes no sense if you explain it out loud. Then you play it, and somehow it feels normal that Donkey Kong is punching Solid Snake while music from Final Fantasy plays in the background.
That is the magic of Smash Ultimate. It is not just a fighting game. It is a giant “remember this?” machine. Every stage, song, assist trophy, item, and character feels like Nintendo and everyone involved tried to cram as much gaming history as possible into one cartridge before the Switch caught fire.
As a casual player, the game is at its best locally. Sitting in the same room with people and playing Smash is still the ideal version. Someone always picks a character they barely understand. Someone always blames the stage. Someone always says items are cheap right after using one. Nobody knows what is happening for five seconds, then suddenly someone gets launched off the screen and everyone acts like they planned it.
That is peak Smash.
The gameplay itself is also excellent. It is easy enough to start playing without needing a fighting game degree, but there is a ton underneath if you want to get better. Movement, spacing, recoveries, grabs, edge guarding, matchup knowledge... it is all there. Ultimate works because it lets casual players mash around and have fun, but it also gives serious players enough depth to live inside the game for years and develop terrifying opinions about short hops.
The audience view on this game seems pretty consistent: people love the roster, the amount of content, the speed, the music, and the fact that it works for both casual and competitive players. The biggest complaint is online. And yeah, the online deserves the complaints.
When Smash Ultimate online is good, it is fine. When it is bad, it feels like trying to play a fighting game through soup. Input delay in a game this timing-heavy is brutal. Matchmaking can be weird, rulesets do not always feel like what you wanted, and newer players jumping in now may run into people who have been grinding this game since launch. That is not exactly a warm welcome. It is more like showing up to casual basketball and realizing everyone else brought knee braces, sweatbands, and unresolved childhood trauma.
World of Light is also not my favorite part. It is not bad, and I respect that there is a big single-player mode here, but it gets repetitive. Fight themed spirit battle, get reward, move across the map, repeat. Some of the battles are clever. Some are annoying in a way that made me stare at the screen and wonder if fun had briefly left the building.
But even with those issues, the amount of value here is stupid. The music alone is insane. You could spend forever just messing with characters, stages, rules, spirits, and modes. This game has so much content that it almost feels rude to complain about it, even though I will absolutely still complain about the online because Nintendo needs to stop acting like the internet is a new invention.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is not perfect, but it is probably the closest the series has gotten to feeling complete. It has the casual party chaos, the competitive depth, the fan-service overload, and the “one more match” problem that turns 20 minutes into two hours.
If you mostly play online, the score drops. If you play locally with friends, this is one of the best multiplayer games ever put on a Nintendo system.
Ultimate is messy, loud, unfair, hilarious, sweaty, casual, competitive, and packed with more gaming nonsense than should legally fit in one game.
So yeah. It is Smash.
Players who want a fighting game that can be a casual party mess one night and a serious “why did I just lose to Kirby?” training session the next.
